AI & cyber-security

Voices in AI – Episode 64: A Conversation with Eli David

About this Episode

Episode 64 of Voices in AI features host Byron Reese and Dr. Eli David discuss evolutionary computation, deep learning and neural networks, as well as AI’s role in improving cyber-security. Dr. David is the CTO and co-founder of Deep Instinct as well as having published multiple papers on deep learning and genetic algorithms in leading AI journals.

Transcript Excerpt

Byron Reese: This is Voices in AI, brought to you by GigaOm. I’m Byron Reese. And today, our guest is Dr. Eli David. He is the CTO and the co-founder of Deep Instinct. He’s an expert in the field of computational intelligence, specializing in deep learning and evolutionary computation. He’s published more than 30 papers in leading AI journals and conferences, mostly focusing on applications of deep learning and genetic algorithms in various real-world domains. Welcome to the show, Eli.

Eli David: Thank you very much. Great to be here.

So bring us up to date, or let everybody know what do we mean by evolutionary computation, and deep learning and neural networks? Because all three of those are things that, let’s just say, they aren’t necessarily crystal clear in everybody’s minds what they are. So let’s begin by defining your terms. Explain those three concepts to us.

Sure, definitely. Now, both neural networks and evolutionary computation take inspiration from intelligence in nature. If instead of trying to come up with smart mathematical ways of creating intelligence, we just look at the nature to see how intelligence works there, we can reach two very obvious conclusions. First, the only algorithm that is in charge of creating intelligence – we started from single-cell organisms billions of years ago, and now we are intelligent organisms – and the main algorithm, or maybe the only algorithm, in charge of that was evolution. So evolutionary computation takes inspiration from the evolutionary process in the nature and trying to evolve computer programs so that, from one generation to other, they will become smarter and smarter, and the smarter they are, the more they breed, the more children they have, and so, hopefully the smart gene improves one generation after the other.

The other thing that we will notice when we observe nature is brains. Nearly all the intelligence in humans or other mammals or the intelligent animals, it is due to a neural network and network of neurons which we refer to as a brain — many small processing units connected to each other via what we call synapses. In our brains, for example, we have many tens of billions of such neurons, each one of them, on average, connected to about ten thousand other neurons, and these small processing units connected to each other, they create the brain; they create all our intelligence. So the two fields of evolutionary computation and artificial neural networks, nowadays referred to as deep learning, and we will shortly dwell on the difference as well, take direct inspiration from nature.

Now, what is the difference between deep learning, deep neural networks, traditional neural networks, etc? So, neural networks is not a new field. Already in the 1980s, we had most of the concepts that we have today. But the main difference is that during the past several years, we had several major breakthroughs, while until then, we could train only shallow neural networks, shallow artificial neural networks, just a few layers of neurons, just a few thousand synapses, connectors. A few years ago, we managed to make these neural networks deep, so instead of a few layers, we have many tens of layers; instead of a few thousand connectors, we have now hundreds of millions, or billions, of connectors. So instead of having shallow neural networks, nowadays we have deep neural networks, also known as deep learning. So deep learning and deep neural networks are synonyms.